Bolt Action

by Charlie Charters

  KRRRAAAAAACCKKKK.

  There’s a mighty kick astern, and a lot of acoustic power, like a depth charge, shunts the plane forward. Tristie’s strapped into the jump seat, her head through the neck of one of Button’s jumpers, something long enough to cover most of her up. But her broken collarbone means her right arm is still flapping around inside. Trapped.

  Salahuddin has a bullfighter’s smile on his face as he barrels along sideways and down.’This is real flying.’ Clutching the wheel, jammed hard left. ‘Better not . . . push this . . . old girl . . . too far,’ he says through clenched teeth. ‘She’s either going . . . to come to pieces . . . now . . . or take us home.’

  They hold on, waiting for the sign, things coming to pieces.

  And wait.

  Ne-ne-ne-ne. Couple of klaxon things start up. Whopp-whoppwhopp warning sounds.

  As he begins to right the plane again, Salahuddin looks at Tristie mock-sternly. ‘Did you pull the wiring up there?’ He’s flying with one hand, on the internal phone with the other. Trying to get damage reports from the various cabin crew stations.

  Nodding his head to whoever he’s speaking to. ‘OK . . . Good . . . Thank you . . . No damage? Excellent.’

  Ne-ne-ne, still blaring. Lots of whopp, whopp, whopp.

  When he’s finished, Tristie glances back at the tiny panel door she had squeezed through. ‘How do you think I got this far?’

  Salahuddin looks a little po-faced. You hurt my plane. Then turns to an array of switches above his head, adjusts a knob, then to his side, checks something important. Dials and buttons. Working through his systems, occasionally a question to Whiffler. Methodical, reasserting control, and at one with his aircraft.

  The ne-ne-ne alarms are first to be cancelled, or ignored and switched off. One shrill track, after the other. Then the whopp-whopp- whopps.

  Finally, all is quiet. Alarms, radio calls silent, the horizon where it should be, like the cadavers, flopped on the floor.

  Tristie thinks a question is in order. Salahuddin has got clearance for an emergency landing at a nearby Canadian Forces Air Command Base. Goose Bay. ‘Instead of keeping us on tenterhooks . . . tell us whether this old girl, as you so inelegantly call her, is going to get us on the ground or will she come apart at the seams?’

  Whiffler turns too, equally keen to know. Through the broad cockpit windows, there’s some vast inhospitable terrain below. Razor-sharp mountain ranges, for one thing.

  No answer. Just a quick knowing glance, from the captain to Tristie, on to Whiffler, and back to her again. But the bastard is definitely smiling.

  Epilogue

  Less than three hundred miles from the planned point of engagement, Captain Saeed Harry Salahuddin lands his Boeing 777, City of Risalpur, at the Labrador airbase of Goose Bay. It helps considerably that Goose Bay is one of the Shuttle’s alternative landing sites . . . Runway 08/26 is so long Salahuddin doesn’t need to touch his brakes or reverse-thrust the engines. In the cockpit, he’d done his best to disguise his fears, playfully mocking Tristie Merritt. In fact, he has had to nurse the plane all the way in, jockeying the two engine throttles for turn and descent. Gingerly trying his best to put the least strain through the tailfin rudder and tailplane elevators, and without vital flight management systems because of Merritt’s casual attitude to on-board wiring. He suspects grave damage has been done by the exploding AMRAAM, and he is proved right.

  On the ground, the engineers are shocked. The plane’s massive tail assembly stretches sixty foot into the air. The skin on the vertical plane looks like a colander, dapples of sunlight clearly visible through it. A few of the old-boy engineers take photos, later get their books out and lay pictures of their Boeing 777 against those of Flying Fortress B17s returning from daylight raids over Nazi Germany. Same sort of damage.

  The plane had rolled to a halt at a slight angle across the centreline, emergency slide rafts deployed, everybody scampering to waiting trucks and ambulances. The passengers, of all ages and cultures, embracing, holding hands with strangers. Even kissing.

  The airbase hasn’t seen anything like it since 9/11, when the 7,000-strong community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay did their best to accommodate thousands of passengers from diverted transatlantic flights.

  It had complicated things that among several on-board functions, Tristie Merritt disabled the entire Airfone system. The Boeing 777 went click, off air. To the obvious consternation of relatives, politicians and anybody with a stake in keeping that thing flying. The talking heads on live television strike a duly sombre note . . . running apocalyptic captions like AIRFONE CLUE TO SHOOT-DOWN CONFIRMED?

  Goose Bay is a tiny town and Labrador a virtually nonexistent media market. So there is no way immediately to generate live pictures of the Pakistan International Airlines flight landing . . . nor of the passengers walking from the plane. A media staple.

  The venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation scrambles into action with an extended version of Labrador Morning, hosted live from the airport car park, with the Boeing in the distance, looking as though her guts had turned inside out, chutes deployed and doors open.

  When they finally come through, the CBC television pictures are hard to deny and suck the worst of the tension out of the flashpoints and rumours that had ignited around the world. Some, of course, achieved a momentum of their own and would take longer to burn out. But most prove a one-day wonder.

  Salahuddin stays in the cockpit, quietly closing down his plane. Checking off his systems, one by one. Detail-oriented to the very last. Even as firefighters bustle around, putting out the smouldering debris above the cockpit, and Canadian military and police details start poking around the three corpses, asking questions. When there is nothing more to be done, he quietly excuses himself from the cockpit, locks the toilet door behind him, and sobs his heart out.

  Much later, he collects a hatful of gongs and citations for his outstanding airmanship and courageous leadership during a time of terrible crisis. These include, unusually, a Super Airmanship Award from the joint US–Canada Airline Pilots Association, and the first ever nomination of a foreigner for the National Aeronautic Association’s Wright Brothers’ Award, ‘for significant public service of enduring value to aviation in the United States’.

  Despite always dedicating his prizes to the ‘real heroes’ of PK412 and detailing their exploits wherever he can, Captain Salahuddin never again sees Merritt. Nor Whiffler or Button.

  But very often he will think of them, especially her. And being a logical man, his mind will turn over and over that same question – the physics, or mechanics, of how a woman this size with those curves managed to fit through a panel that size.

  Captain Saluhuddin knows it happened, but never resolves it satisfactorily. His wife sharply encourages him to move on . . . stop thinking about this other woman in your life.

  The flame sputters and dies. Even in Pakistan, where the government rushes to laud itself for the resolve, steely-eyed courage, level-headedness, etc., with which it had handled matters. Though little, if any, of this was ever in evidence.

  From his new roving posting, based in Kabul, former CIA head of station Bill Lamayette continues to cable statements at variance with the more dreamy-eyed assumptions of his home-based masters. Initially these generate polite enthusiasm, but as time passes, old habits re-establish themselves. Big organisations simply can’t unlearn this stuff, and the number of people who read his missives falls to less than five, two of whom are archivists.

  James Romen is confirmed as the new CIA director, in place of Lamayette’s mentor, General Jerry Stangel, who, in turn, disconnected from the adrenalin and drama of Langley, dies within weeks. It never emerges that Romen had been one of the wunderkinds responsible for conceiving the General Khan rendition, and even watched the live feed from the Karachi golf course that fateful early morning.

  One of Romen’s first initiatives, palling around with senior department heads in a break-the-ice sort of way, i
s to run a weekly sweepstake. Each week they select a different swear word, and bet on the number of times it appears in Lamayette’s cables. Subtext – the guy is a joke.

  President Charles Hannah is delighted, in due course, to increase US aid to Pakistan in all forms, but especially military. Meaningful oversight of this remains negligible.

  The last time that Lamayette, the US government and CIA policy converges to everybody’s satisfaction is in the pursuit of Washington’s money, embezzled and salted away by General Ali Mahmood Khan. This happens within days of Operation Macchar being foiled, Lamayette having been given carte blanche.

  Having promised so much death and destruction, and delivered so little, the two sons of General Khan have found boltholes hard to come by.

  Hamza, his elder son and confidant of Pir Durbar, and Shafiq, the younger, the porcine eunuch type, are picked up and helicoptered off to distant parts. Neither of them has an ounce of their father’s wit and cunning. They argue and fight between themselves, devoting their energies to selling each other out. In this mean and cold game, the children of the Tiger of Baluchistan are like helpless newborn kittens, and only Lamayette can be the winner.

  Anticipating an almost regal enthronement after the downing of PK412, the Khan brothers had transferred all of their father’s ill-gotten wealth into Pakistani banks. But like a sponge, what the banks sucked up, they could – with just a little local political pressure, a twist of the arm here, a Federal Investigation Agency raid there – give back.

  Islamabad uses all its influence to return Washington’s money. The Government Accountability Office’s comptroller-general is delighted to accept a personal invitation from the president of Pakistan himself, to receive a cheque for the aggregate amount of General Khan’s embezzled funds . . . $219 million plus change. Lots of photos and big toothy smiles, warm endorsements and glowing reports filed back to Congress, where there’s a genuine aura of wonderment, I think we can really do business with these people . . .

  It finishes for Lamayette where it all started. The same eighty-two-foot-long Monte Fino Sky Lounge cruiser, on to which General Khan had been delivered like a rolled-up length of carpet.

  Bobbing in the choppy early morning seas about ten miles south-east of the sugar-loaf-shaped Churma Island, just beyond the urban sprawl of Karachi.

  He is standing on the dive platform at the stern of the cruiser, one leg inside the Zodiac inflatable, tying his final knots, checking the tension of the lines. This, the very same Zodiac that was used to exfiltrate General Khan from French Beach. It’s the only way to wash my hands of this whole fucking sorry business, he had blurted out to Kirsten Ackerman in the middle of the night. She was asleep at the time, her leg curled over him, her pretty face rising and falling on his chest.

  Shafiq Khan has his whiny, seven-year-old girl’s voice on. ‘You said you’d give us a chance.’

  When he looks up, Lamayette’s face is purple, sweat beading across his bald, mighty skull. ‘This is a chance, you idiot. More of a chance than you were ever willing to give.’

  Hamza tries a different tack. ‘What if I said there is more money . . . we could share it? You and me, Mr Bill.’ Immediately there’s tugging and jostling between the two brothers.

  Shafiq and Hamza Khan are sitting back to back, trussed up by tape at the neck, shoulder and hip. The lightweight thwart, or seat bench, has been removed, and the two of them sit low in the dinghy, the rigid collar of inflatable tubes rising to their shoulders.

  ‘Now listen . . .’ And Lamayette holds up a standard Swiss Army penknife. ‘I am taping this here . . .’ and he leans over the transom, the rigid rear panel of the dinghy ‘. . . on to the outside edge, near the outboard.’

  Shafiq faces astern, his pudgy eyes glaring. Hamza’s angular body is pointed forward, so he coils around, watches over his shoulder.

  ‘All you have to do is work together, stop fighting like a bunch of fucking pansies. Get the knife, solve the problem.’ Lamayette looks the picture of reasonableness, a teacher who’s just set the class a problem to work on.

  Last job . . . he hand-tightens a series of finger-bolts on the outboard, locking it in place, creating an autosteer that will drive the dinghy straight and true . . . tugs the bow rope so the stubby nose follows him around the dive platform to the edge of the stern . . . starts the fifteen-horsepower engine, selects a medium power setting that roars in his ears.

  There’s a babble of excited anxiety from the two brothers . . . they have to shout over the noise of the outboard.

  ‘What . . . what are you doing with us?’

  ‘Mr Bill. You can stop your threats now. We give in.’

  ‘Shut . . . the fuck . . . up.’ Lamayette looks at the two of them one last time, holds the rope tight; the dinghy, already under power, slews this way and that. He points over the horizon, due south. ‘About ten thousand miles that way you’ll see your first icebergs.’

  He gives the rope one last pull, to get the nose pointed in the right direction. Then, off, off they go. Shafiq and Hamza . . . on a Big Adventure in the wide-open, shimmering blue sea.

  Although bound up together, the brothers are free to move, get up, walk about, with the proviso that their wrists are linked. Tied with fifteen-weight fly-fishing line, sturdy as you can get. The lines are taut, and threaded through the various eyeholes and closed oarlocks on the dinghy. If Hamza moves his right arm, this has an equal and opposite effect on Shafiq’s left, and vice versa.

  All they have to do, for the first time ever, is think, be nice to one another, work together. If they can, then one of them will get to the penknife.

  Faithful Jahanghir shakes his head, sickened by Lamayette’s charity. He had watched all of this from the stern of the cruiser, with considerable disdain. ‘You should have shot them in the stomach, left them in the mountains.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ Lamayette hauls himself up the ladder. ‘Probably it comes to the same thing . . .’

  ‘It’s that woman, she is doing strange things to you, Mr Bill.’

  My friend, you don’t know the half of it . . .

  Hamza and Shafiq Khan are never seen again.

  The air force base at Goose Bay, where the Boeing 777 lands, has seen better times. It used to host a permanent training facility for the Royal Air Force, as well as air forces from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

  By the time the PIA flight touches down, the personnel on the ground is nothing like it was. The physical structures remain, the hangars, taxiways, bunkers, but the human capability has long since shrunk, transferred away.

  From Thames House in London, a stream of messages are sent by MI5, pestering in their intensity. Direct to the Goose Bay AFB; to MI5’s liaison officer at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters; to their sister domestic spook agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and to the British embassy in Ottawa.

  Isolate Tristie Merritt . . . I need to speak to her. The messages are in the name of the director-general of MI5 but are authored by the one person. Sheila No Oil Painting Davane.

  Even Britain’s honorary consul to Newfoundland and Labrador gets a call on his mobile phone, in the middle of a family lunch, and is startled by the almost unintelligible torrent of Ulster-speak. I focking want her . . .

  Reinforcements do arrive, but in the first couple of hours the skeleton workforce at Goose Bay struggles to cope. The passports (very few have got Canadian visas, of course), the medical checks, treating the injured, finding counsellors, meals, organising phone calls, hotel rooms, bus, transport vouchers. It’s hard enough just fighting off the media.

  Goose Bay’s arrangements are improvised, and soon the system is creaking. Passengers are taken to empty accommodation blocks or given washing facilities that were once security-proofed, but are no longer. They never stand a chance against the three members of Ward 13. Not with people who want to drop out, who want to lose themselves, and are trained in such arts by the best armed forces in the world.
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br />   Thames House eventually gets the news. A few of the passengers appear . . . to have disappeared. And Davane doesn’t even bother asking for names. That Merritt girl is good . . .

  Money is the key to their escape. Tristie, Button and Whiffler have plenty, and they find a no-questions-asked friend in a rundown bar for too-drunk-to-fight fishermen. The skipper of a Portuguese trawler, the Santa Maria, has had to dock in St John’s, Newfoundland, for emergency repairs to the winch system. No weench, no feesh, he explains in a heavy accent. The Santa Maria is supposed to be hauling up cod and plaice from the depths of the Grand Banks.

  The captain eyes them carefully, keen to make sure they know what they’re letting themselves in for. Waving his arms dramatically. ‘Maybee we go ‘ome to ‘urope . . . maybee nixt munth,’ he says. ‘You passenger, no talk . . .’ He zips his lips with a wild hand movement. ‘‘Til then, high seas feeshing. Big wave. Up, down . . . feeshing always. Cod, plaice, shrimp. Out there.’ He waves off towards the east, beyond the poster of a pouting Jenna Jameson. ‘Nobody see us, ‘til nixt munth. Seeeks week even.’

  Sounds absolutely perfect.

  Acknowledgments

  This is a debut novel and one of the things the self-help books and writers’ groups say is, Be Very Careful About Using Family Members As Critics. Thankfully that does not apply in my case. For the person who contributed most to the book that is Bolt Action is my Mother, an extraordinary woman who also does not care one bit for the thriller genre that I aspire to. Nonetheless, through endless hours of jotting and read-throughs she hacked at, sandpapered down and generally purged my writing of all the stuff my daughters would describe as, Icky. If you’ve got this far in the book and generally had an acceptable time, my Mum is the reason.